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Farm to Capsule: How is Juice Plus+ Made?

Farm to Capsule: How is Juice Plus+ Made?

Have you ever wondered what’s in your Juice Plus+ capsules? Well, powdered juice from fruits and vegetables — like beets, kale, blueberries, carrots, and broccoli — is the short answer, but how does it get there?

We start with family farms

Juice Plus+ ingredients are grown on midsize family farms, which are big enough to supply the quantities of fruits and vegetables Juice Plus+ needs, but small enough to keep a careful eye on quality. We periodically inspect the farms ourselves, observing everything from weed control to the harvesting process.

We let nature take its time

The first step in capturing plant-based nutrition at its best is to let the fruits and vegetables fully ripen. (Ripe produce equals nutritious produce!) That seems obvious, but too often crops are picked weeks early to make them easier to transport long distances to factories or grocery stores. That’s just not good enough for us. All Juice Plus+ ingredients are allowed to reach their nutritional peak. Most are cleaned and frozen right at the farm — within just a few hours of harvest — to preserve their nutrients at the point of maximum potency. In fact, this whole process happens within 24-48 hours.

When fruits and vegetables can’t be processed on site, they are immediately frozen whole and sent to the nearest juicing and drying facility. The freezing process also preserves the nutrients’ potency. As one product line manager notes, “There’s a very short amount of time from when they [the fruits and vegetables] are harvested to when they’re frozen, locking in the freshness and nutrients.”

We protect the delicate nutrients

Once they make it to the juicing and drying plant, the fruits and vegetables are juiced whole (for fruits like oranges, grapes, and berries, that includes the peel, skin, and seeds) and carefully dried into a nutritious plant-based powder. Juice Plus+ uses a proprietary low-temperature drying process to protect their fragile nutrients.

We encapsulate plant-based nutrition

After drying, the fruits and veggies arrive at one of several state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, all of which meet or exceed food quality standards and have a range of certifications that are second to none. There, they are blended, encapsulated, packaged, safety-sealed, and sent to our temperature-controlled warehouse where they are stored until they are shipped straight to your door.

We oversee every step of the process

All our manufacturing partners — whether they’re growers, juicers, or encapsulators — have quality control procedures that we have reviewed and approved at every step of the way. Our manufacturers provide certificates of analysis that match our specifications before they ship the product.

We’re committed to quality

All Juice Plus+ products are made without GMO ingredients. (Keep in mind, there are only 11 GMO crops that have been approved for sale in the United States: soybeans, corn, canola, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beets, summer squash, papaya, apples and potatoes.)

Many people ask if Juice Plus+ ingredients are organic. While Juice Plus+ opts to use organic produce whenever possible, we strive for a higher standard than just ‘organic.’ An organic certification is essentially a paper trail that ensures no unapproved pesticides were used. However, the term does not speak to the quality of the product or integrity of the growers.

We value our NSF Certification, which tests for contaminants and heavy metals in addition to pesticides. Juice Plus+ capsules and chewables, as well as Complete by Juice Plus+ snack bars and shake mixes, have been certified by NSF, an independent non-profit that sets extremely high standards of safety and quality for nutritional products. The NSF-certification and ‘seal of approval’ found on all product verifies that only the ingredients on the label are found inside the bottle.

We love what we do

Tim, a blueberry farmer who provides ingredients for Juice Plus+, puts it best:
“My favorite part of working with Juice Plus+ is knowing that people are benefitting from what we’re doing. We put a lot of work into how we grow our ingredients and how we process them so that they’re safe and high-quality and nutritious. It’s neat to see the results of that by seeing the customers that use them and seeing their lives improved from some of the healthy ingredients and produce we process.”

In this Farm-to-Capsule blog series, we will take a deeper dive into the Juice Plus+ processes. Stay tuned for insights on the role of each process and how these processes vary by product.